Because people what to make love but not always want to or can't keep the kid(s). The otherwise mother might not like going through the pain of childbirth either. Doctors may have informed the partners that the offspring have undesired traits such as possible learning difficulties, cystic fibrosis or sickle cell anaemia and the partners might want to save their children from having a much reduced quality of life. As far as I know, abortion is looked down upon by religions and religious places so there would be a relatively low abortion rate.

~ "Safe legal and rare" first became a pro-choice rallying cry during the Clinton administration, and has been invoked by media-makers and politicians like – even President Obama has called the mantra "the right formulation" on abortion. It's a "safe" pro-choice answer: to support abortion, but wish it wasn't necessary ~

In essence the word "rare" implies that, while abortions should be legal, they should happen only when faced with the utmost necessity. Hence the supporters of the "rare abortions" movement means it should be used only when required due to critical medical situations. It also implies that abortions happens too often.

However, this was not always the case for the "rare" word. While it is now more often than not used by the more liberal no-campaigners and the more conservative yes-campaigners, it was intended for the slogan of the major yes-campaign.

This was effectively stopped and undermined by the mentioned liberal no-campaigners, using "rare" to both stigmatize women resorting to abortions, but also twisting the yes-campaigners words into implying that abortions were already too common, forcing the yes-campaigners to abandon it.

The way the "rare" word is included in todays debates proves it inconsistent with "removing a clump of cells"

When discussing any other medical situations or operations, be it surgery or vaccines, etc, the word "rare" is never used in the same context. This is mostly due to the fact that people using the word "rare" doesnt see abortions as any other medical operation, nor do they see it as "removing a clump of cells".

There are no other surgeries which we want to RESTRICT access to when it can be critical to ones health. Hence why using the "rare" words makes "abortions" and "removing a clump of cells" consistently illogical. A tumor is per definition a clump of cells, and a surgery removing a tumor has never been debated upon whether its too common or not.

JJJ

(Disclaimer: I personally hold the stance that plastic surgery done on underage girls is not critical to their health)

Okay, so that gets back to the base question, why would someone use RARE to qualify their pro-abortion stance?

-Would they not have the intellectual capacity to acknowledge their own logical inconsistency? -Are they trying to appease people from the other side rather than taking a principled stance?-Are they just morally reprehensible people that deep down think that abortions are killing babies, but for political gain support having abortions?

1: To express the opinion that abortions should only be used as a last resort when faced with a definite necessity.

-But why should it be a last resort? Its a legal and a safe procedure. What should they be doing first before getting an abortion? What is the consequence of getting that abortion?

2: To stigmatize women who have resorted to abortion, or support it by saying it is too common.

-It seems odd that a supporter of women's rights (e.g., abortion) would want to stigmatize a women for exercise her right. Again, if its safe and legal, why would you criticize or stigmatize someone for doing it? Exercise is safe and legal. Damn those a-holes that keep exercising! See, doesn't make much sense.

3: To convey the opinion that abortions shouldnt be trifled with due to it being something else than "removing a clump of cells"

-Oh, its something more? Then what? Could it possibly border on ending the life of an innocent person? If so, why are we so quick to make it safe and legal?

@Pooh, I have given you the 3 leading reasons for including "rare" in the "safe, legal and rare". And have correctly answered your question. The reasoning behind the explanation for the qualifier was not what you asked.

Hmm... so you're claiming the 1000 coins? I would argue that the "why" question implicitly goes to the reason of why they take that position. You gave end results, not motive, which is truly what I'm interested in.

You could apply those qualifiers to any invasive medical procedure. I would like open heart surgery to be safe, legal, and rare. Rare because there are always potential complications, which it would be greatly preferable avoid entirely through preventative medicine. Abortion is no different. It is not logically inconsistent to say that a procedure is necessary and be desirous that the necessity occur as infrequently as possible.

Perhaps the word 'rare' is tagged on to sate the minds who would otherwise be those of a pro-life stance? My belief that cynicism rules the world really makes it seem like that is the purpose of using the word. Pulling as many people as possible to your side.

@Beren, don't kid yourself. In supporting a pro-choice position, the rare is not intended to be for the safety of the mother. Remember, its safe... While at risk of setting up a strawman, the article quoted by JJJ introduces a study that says women are 14 times as likely to die by carrying out a pregnancy to term rather than just getting an abortion. If that's the case, then every single women should always have an abortion rather than take a pregnancy to term, if safety is a concern.

@DDB, Getting somewhere... I would argue that anyone pro-life would be in that position because they support the life of the unborn child. To think that someone would be pro-life to oppress women is truly reprehensible (to me). So, just as there are logically inconsistent people on the pro-choice side (e.g., someone that takes the stance that abortions should be safe, legal, and rare) I'm sure there are some people on the pro-life side that may be tricked into thinking that taking the life of an unborn child should be legal, as long as its rare.

TL;DR: maybe read something other than Steven Crowder every once in a while.'cause this tested well

Any attempt to read deeper into this, especially from an ideologically-motivated, self-serving standpoint trying to come up with a "gotcha," is a fundamentally flawed undertaking. However, my guess is that the "rare" part is to mitigate damage from pro-life voters (which it does not seem to be doing well) and appeal to people on the fence who're uncomfortable with the idea of abortion (the ones who go out of their way to say they're pro-choice but anti-abortion).

I think what you're trying to do here is bring up some sort of cognitive dissonance in the latter group. If they're okay with abortions happening legally, then why are they uncomfortable with many abortions happening?

Well it turns out that instead of pulling reasons out of our asses and reading into noise emanating from our preconceived notions of how people work, we can probably find actual signals here. As a start, instead of attempting to put words and thoughts into the mouths and heads of these people, we can begin by reading what they have to say:

Officially I am pro-choice and anti-abortion. This view tends to leave people confused and angry that they think I am playing with their heads, so let me explain. I don’t think that a woman should be forced to carry a fetus to term. I also believe that abortion is a horrible experience for the mother and the fetus. I doubt that anybody looks forward to having one.

As a member of the clergy I understand these distinctions, and keep them in mind whenever we seek to enact laws that would basicly subjugate human rights to subjective and/or relative moral codes. I believe God gave mankind free will, even knowing that we would sin. In the end, abortion is between a woman and God, and whether or not she has one is her choice, both according to God and the Constitution.

Would I myself ever have an abortion? I'd like to think the answer is no, not ever -- unless my life was in grave danger. But it's arrogant and narrow-minded to think it's out of the realm of possibility and pointless to expect others to feel the same way. If I were in need of an abortion, it would be an intensely painful, private, personal decision between my doctor and I -- and not something I'd want the government and state lawmakers involved in.

While I don't personally share the arguments made by any of these three sources*, I think they all merit reading if you're interested in the issue + how people come to their viewpoints on it. I also didn't find any hard data near the top of my Google search for "pro-choice anti-abortion" but I believe that you'll likely find something from Pew or PRRI since they tend to have polls on just about everything.

However, even without that extra data, I think these three viewpoints are responsive to your allegation of "logical inconsistency." Your idea of a pro-choice, anti-abortion voter is someone who sees abortion as trivial and harmless (as just "not murder," essentially) but is at the same time uncomfortable with a society where abortions are common. But that does not apply to any of the three viewpoints above.

Matthew Gilman (first source) is pro-choice on grounds that include the first argument (abortion is not murder) but anti-abortion on the grounds that it's still a traumatic experience. No evil is committed, but it's a painful medical procedure that creates societal consequences. Even if those consequences are outweighed by the good of not forcing women to carry pregnancies to term, there's still an opportunity cost if abortion can be avoided altogether. (As an analogy, imagine that we lived in a society where lung cancer could be surgically removed with >99% reliability. Now, even though the procedure would work and save people's lives, cancer surgery is a risky and traumatic experience with often serious side-effects. So if you're given a choice between not getting the surgery and getting the surgery, getting the surgery would win out. But if you throw in the third option of not needing the surgery in the first place, then that's the best option overall.) I think it's pretty straightforward to see why Gilman would want abortions to be "safe" and "legal" (he believes that the good of women's choice outweighs the side-effects of abortion) but also "rare" (he furthermore believes that a) there's a third option where abortion can be avoided altogether, and b) avoiding the trauma of abortion is sufficiently worthwhile that this third option should be exercised as often as possible). This is basically the trauma argument.

Similar lines of reasoning exist for the other two arguments. The second source (Kelly Graham on Quora) presents a traditional "hate the sin, not the sinner" argument. From their perspective, the (legal, not moral) utility of preserving free will outweighs the bad of a rather serious sin- just like how God giving Cain free will outweighed the evil of Cain murdering Abel. So again, if there's two options- banning abortions (no evil, but no free will) and allowing abortions (evil, but through free will)- then allowing abortions prevails. But if you throw in the third option of not having abortions altogether- free will without evil (through humans choosing to be good)- then of course that third option would prevail. Hence the preference for "rare" (in this case, no abortions at all).

Third one- Alison Freer- echoes the viewpoints of Mr. Gilman and Kelly Graham- but with different arguments for allowing abortion and against having common abortions. She echoes a variation of Gilman's "trauma" argument (with an additional focus on women's choice) but her argument for abortion has more to do with intrusion into private life. Same pattern, though, a "good" of abortion that's not outweighed by the "evil" of abortion- but an opportunity cost that makes the alternative of not needing abortions at all preferable.

I think where your interpretation of the issue breaks down is in your attempt to frame it as a straight good-vs-evil (in terms of utility) argument where the good and evil of a single abortion don't intrinsically differ from the good and evil of many abortions. However, this neglects the issue of opportunity cost, which single-handedly accounts for each of the three Google search result viewpoints above. Your idea seems to posit that if the good of a single abortion outweighs the harm, then there's no reason at all for someone to be uncomfortable with many abortions. But it's also worth considering the margin by which that good outweighs the harm and how it compares to the margins for other options- the basic economic idea of opportunity cost. Hence people can be logically consistent in their pro-choice but anti-abortion viewpoints.

I don't know if you're familiar with the concept of opportunity cost, so here's a simple illustration: at a proper cookout in Texas, you're not allowed to have well-done steak, but medium-rare is okay, and blue rare is better. So medium-rare is more "good" than "bad" but it has the opportunity cost of not eating proper rare steak instead. Similarly, you could formulate the pro-choice/anti-abortion viewpoint as: "Banning abortions is wrong, having an abortion is okay, but side-stepping the issue altogether is the best option." Banning abortions, like well-done steak, results in more bad than good (in the eyes of this group). Allowing an abortion is more good than bad, but not by as big a margin as just a pregnant woman not wanting/needing an abortion in the first place. So abortions are okay, but not needing to worry about an abortion in the first place? That's what the "safe, legal, and rare" people would have in their ideal world even though they're willing to allow less optimal options.

For the record, I am not here to engage you in debate on the morality or legality of abortion. As previously mentioned, I do not share any of the three viewpoints above. You might find their arguments compelling or (more likely) not. In either case, however, they represent the viewpoints of the people you're attempting to profile here and should be taken at face value not as good arguments but as arguments that represent the reasoning of this group. I.e., don't attempt to sidestep out of this by simply engaging flaws in the three viewpoints above instead of sticking to your original goalpost of cognitive dissonance.

Therefore, this response pretty squarely answers your question. You'd be moving the goalposts pretty hard if you pretend it doesn't. I expect you to do so anyway, so in advance I'd like to tell you to go fuck yourself. (As usual, I won't be hanging around on this thread. I usually just downvote, hide, and move on, but there's a compulsive part of me that's sufficiently troubled by your disingenuousness and intellectual dishonesty here that I had to respond but not engage just this one time. $10 is also nothing to me, so idrc that you made this thread without the intention of actually giving anyone those coins in the first place.)

* I consider myself pro-abortion but anti-choice, largely as I'm in favor of human extinction. That's an issue for another time, however.

More like asks a question with a bunch of easy answers, then decides to move the goalposts when he gets those answers.

Most everyone in this post has presented valid reasons for why the qualifier "rare" is included in that slogan. However, instead of accepting them as answers, Pooh has then decided to engage them as arguments rather than as responses. Sometimes he merely dismisses them on conservative ideological grounds, based on assumptions he makes about the real intentions or real thought processes of people that disagree with him.

This is really what frustrates me about this subculture of trying to engage in "debates" on the OT. The people doing so certainly aren't doing so out of a desire to actually learn or test their arguments- that's given away by the fact that they use this forum instead of venues that are much better suited to the task. Moreover, they opt to ask questions here in bad faith that they could easily get answers for through a simple Google search. Education requires effort on the part of the learner, and you clearly don't see that on the "debates" on this site.

Rather, Glam, Pooh, and the rest, who attempt to present the Warlight Off-topic forum as a legitimate value for debate and discussion, are basically the Internet versions of those pseudo-intellectuals that argue against incoherent college freshmen instead of their actual peers. They're not looking to learn or to honestly challenge beliefs. Rather, they come here with the misguided belief that they've unearthed some form of enlightenment that reveals the stupidity of the Other Side. This doesn't even raise any alarms in their head, because they live in a fantasy universe where it would make sense to them that everyone around them is stupid or delusional. So stupid and delusional, in fact, that the most basic, unresearched arguments could topple their entire worldview.

Pooh isn't here to get real answers. He's certainly not here to give away 1000 coins. Instead, he's here to give us a glimpse into his reality- a world where about half the population (or more) is some group of delusional morons and he (and other people with some variation of "common sense") have gleaned the most basic insights about some controversial topic that reveal the other side to be completely, irredeemably wrong. Notice how much effort he's put not into the actual debate itself but into framing it in such a way that he has to put in no effort to shut down responses- because it's not enough for him to just find a venue where people are unlikely to put real effort into their responses, he also has to make sure he's stacked the deck against them.

Pooh, like Glam and the rest of these types of people, is a pathetic man who doesn't quite realize how much of an intellectual lightweight he is. Or perhaps he does. In either case, he's spent a major part of his time at this juncture of his life finding Internet bubbles where he can feel like he actually is much smarter than everyone around him, that he's one of the few who see the light in a society that's been taken over by crazy liberalism or some other purported socio-political disorder.

This isn't a debate or a discussion or a contest. It's a parade. It's where Pooh comes to merely validate his fantasy worldview and get that dopamine hit. It's where he comes to pretend that he's educating people or destroying risibly flawed liberal viewpoints, and he goes out of his way to hide the reality that he's not really doing jack shit. This whole farce of a thread is structured in such a way that it probably won't reveal the contradictions in Pooh's understanding of how the world works or what he's accomplishing here. Pooh lives in Wonderland, and he's throwing us a party here with all the right decorations so he can keep pretending we're still in Wonderland.

Pooh's just doing this to get his kicks- the feeling of "being right" instead of all the effortful thought it entails. He might not even realize it, and yet here we're presented this comical shell of a man. He might even go through his whole life like this- or gravitate to even crazier viewpoints that he's confident are easy to defend (see any Tabby thread for examples). Inside his head is the limp corpse of what a human intellect could have achieved. This contradiction- between what Pooh really is and what Pooh thinks he is- is only going to escalate as time goes on. And so to hide it, he keeps coming back here to share with us some basic observation that he probably didn't even have the capacity to generate himself.

Okay, knyte, my previously terse reply was in jest as I was on my phone. Now that I'm in front of my computer, I will try to explain why your answers are not correct.

I'm also going to respond to you without personal attacks on you, something you have not extended the courtesy to me. Generally, when I'm being attacked like that, its because the person talking to me is a bit dumb, but I don't want to assume in this case... because we all know what happens when you assume.

I'll spill the beans. I really just want to understand the motivation of why someone would take the position that something should be safe and legal, yet still rationed.

You've provided 3 cases, and an idiot's description of opportunity cost. (Notice I didn't call you an idiot, just describing what you provided as something that an idiot would provide. I'm sure you could have come up with a better description, but chose not to.)

So, using your description of Opportunity Cost and applying it to each of the 3 examples you provided, every single one of them provides no value to the life that is being ended.

--Gilman --- a horrible experience for the mother and fetus. Yes, so horrible for the mother. Consider my wife just had the exact same procedure (the only difference was that the baby had already died of natural causes in utero, and was not hacked to pieces or sucked out with a vacuum by a doctor while it was alive) and I can tell you its really not that horrible of a procedure from a medical standpoint. 15 minutes, light anesthesia, soreness for 24 hours and heavy flow at the next cycle. A horrible experience for the fetus? Really, what part of being cut in pieces or sucked up with a vacuum is horrible? I do it all the time.

Here, I'm not advocating from a position of pro-life, I'm just saying, Gilman fully acknowledges that it may be 'awful' for the fetus, but when deciding between which steak to have at a proper Texas BBQ, he's choosing to eat the steak that someone shat on rather than one slightly overcooked on the grill. This is not a logically consistent position to have. Again, I ask, is Gillman that stupid that he doesn't realize how stupid of a position he is in?

And to further deconstruct your 'trauma' argument, the person with lung cancer either randomly got it due to dumb luck, or more likely increased his chances of having lung cancer by smoking. In one event, just dumb luck, and the other, they increased their chances of needing the surgery. In neither event, is an innocent third party brought into the world by the conscious act of another cut into pieces.

Moving to your 2nd reference. What sin is committed during an abortion? Presumably none, right? Now, I get that you can separate legal acts from moral acts. Yet, this argument seems to acknowledge that the person sinning (e.g., the lady that has a clump of cells growing in her, the MD) is actually doing something wrong. So, moving on to this safe and legal (but rare because its a sin) argument.

You seem to place a lot of stock into the free-will argument to support the 2nd positions. I posit its a morally bankrupt position to be. You first acknowledge a sin is being committed, but justify that sin because free-will is better than no sin. So, take the first part... as sin is committed... presumably murder. The very definition of murder is an unlawful premeditated taking of another person's life. (Note to Knyte:, I learned that in Law School, graduating with honors with all of the other intellectual lightweights). Dropping abortion into the 'lawful' bucket would technically take it out of the 'murder' category, but you're still talking about premeditated taking of another person's life in order to support this position that abortion is a sin, but free-will is more important.

So, to completely deconstruct the 2nd position, A religious person is advocating that one type of 'murder' should be legal because free will. Again, at the risk of setting up a strawman, I presume this person would not advocate knyte taking me to the doctor because I have an inferior intellect level. So, what is it about this one type of murder that allows it to be legalized? Once you've acknowledged you're committing a sin, you kinda sunk your own boat for promoting that this should be a legal procedure.

Now, to bury the hatchet into your 3rd position. This is the most honest one. She acknowledges that the only reason she would get an abortion is if her life were in danger. Here, we actually have an opportunity cost analysis that is on par with the taking of a life

Aside: I keep saying 'taking a life,' 'abortion kills a baby' and the like, not because I take the view that abortions are taking a life and kill babies. I say it because the position of having 'safe, legal, and rare' abortions is such a logically inconsistent position. Not to be repetitive, but if you're advocating for abortion rights, then you should think of an abortion as taking a big sh*t (credit to the plant masturbation expert for this analogy). If you think of it as anything other than removing a lump of cells (which you are free to do) then the only logical position to be (AND HENCE WHY I MADE THIS THREAD) was to find out what possible twisted contrition of logic would permit you to have this position. I would love to have it presented to me here, but you, Knyte, have failed and will NOT be getting 1000 gold coins. I'm also perfectly fine with you having the position (because its logically consistent at least in the fact that you are not qualifying that it should be rare) that abortions should be safe, legal, free, subsidized by tax payers, handed out for Halloween, etc. if you think that having an abortion is like taking a sh*t. This isn't to say that I'll have a separate debate with you about when life actually begins. I'll actually pay out 1200 coins to the person that has the right answer to that.

So, back to the opportunity cost analysis of your 3rd provided position. She presumes that it is her life or the babies life. Now, you actually have a true comparison. It reminds me a lot of the higher math that I did while getting a Mechanical Engineering degree, again with honors with a lot of other intellectual nincompoops). In those theories, we would have to determine relative values of certain equations as variables approached limits, like infinity. When comparing X^2 / 2*X, it would reduce to just X as it approaches infinity, not X/2. The 2 in the 2*X denominator was so inconsequential as compared to the X^2 in the numerator. Just like doing a comparison between being uncomfortable for 24 hours and needing an extra pad is inconsequential to being hacked in pieces while still alive.

So, the 3rd position starts out okay, comparing one life to another life. ("But but but one life is an actual life and the other is a potential life" I hear you snivel, let me cut it off with this. But for taking an action to end the potential life, the potential life would have proceeded through a natural course of events to become an actual life. You may have very thin ice to stand on with the potential life v. the actual life argument, but again, I don't think this is where the 3rd argument is derived from. Nor do I think its germane to the debate that I'm having (Yes, this is a debate in case you haven't noticed... you're not winning, but its a debate nonetheless))

This is a very good analysis. Is my life worth the life that could come to be that's growing inside me? Not all mothers will choose the same. It is very important to have free will to determine the outcome in such an event. So, here, you could qualify that abortions should be safe, legal, and rare because they are only permitted in the cases where the mother's life is actually at risk. This will be determined by an independent board of doctors appointed to verify the threat to the mother's life, because it is the government's job to protect life, liberty, and property, and that extends especially to the life that is about to be exterminated to support the mother's continued life. However, she doesn't stop there. She puts a stopper in the door from allowing it to completely close (saying its okay because life of the mother seems to be a viable exception) and then slams the door wide open, stating that other women may not share her values. This is a bankrupt position.

So Knyte, again, I do appreciate you taking time to attempt to put up good arguments of how someone could hold this position. Unlike you, I presume people are generally intelligent. (You do know what happens when you assume, like when you assumed I wasn't intelligent?)

I didn't accept the proposed answers because they are all BS. I find it hard to believe that many people would hold such a logically inconsistent position. However, I do suspect a lot of people's morals because I know there's a lot of sin, and that there is free will to choose to sin. Case in point, you have imputed a lot of bad things about me. I am trying to have a debate. Yet, you are attempting to shut me down by calling me stupid, saying I'm insincere, and the like. You could have put up your points and had a debate about it, but you choose to silence someone that has a different, (and as I've proved so far, more correct) point of view than you.

When I've been made the recipient of personal attacks detached from the issue, that's generally how I know I've made my point, even if the person spewing insults at me is too stupid to know it.

Abortion is a backup method to contraception. Therefore, only planned pregnancies would exist. The ~1% is the contraception that did not work + non-consensual are the only not planned.

If one parent is carrier of a genetic defect, they can in theory create child artificially instead of rolling "the dice". Artificial insemination is usually carried for that end. It is faster than prenatal testing + abort + repeat method. Some genetic defects = disease, others are predispositions. There are maybe better ways to play with genetics or there will be in the future.

A planned pregnancy would not carry to term if there are spontaneous changes (relationships, money, fetal defects). In an ideal world, abortions would only have have to be carried on planned pregnancies.

Like I said, I'm not here to debate you. I'm not going to be complicit in your attempt to prop up and maintain some illusion of intellectual, moral, and ideological superiority.

Those were not personal attacks but simply my assessment of what you're actually doing here. We both know- and I'm saying this without any speculation beyond mere deduction based on the venue and the effort you've put into framing this thread in certain ways- that this thread does not share the basic fundamental intent of education and discourse that characterizes debate.

I find it disconcerting, however, that you've doubled down on this facade by now pretending that the Other Side is merely here to insult you and spout bullshit arguments (+1 for "I'm not calling you an idiot, just saying you walk, talk, and quack like one"). You're propping yourself up as not only an intellectual (the sane man in a room of children) but as a reasonable person attempting to engage with a crazy society (simply "trying to understand" the other side, when we both know damn well that this is not anywhere close to what a sincere attempt at doing so would look like)- just another facet of the worldview you're trying to construct and maintain here. Doing so, of course, requires blindness, and here we see quite a bit of it. If you were the reasonable, sane man here to truly attempt to understand the Other Side and shatter its fundamentally, egregiously flawed understanding of the world- reminiscent of an Athenian attempting to co-opt Socrates' gadfly- then you would not be so desperate and transparent in focusing on characterizing the Other Side as depraved or stupid:

-Would they not have the intellectual capacity to acknowledge their own logical inconsistency? -Are they trying to appease people from the other side rather than taking a principled stance?-Are they just morally reprehensible people that deep down think that abortions are killing babies, but for political gain support having abortions?

This is the world you want to construct and impose, and so I'm only here to challenge that illusion rather than legitimize your idiotic attempt with the appearance of reasoned debate. I understand that you will not find these reasons convincing and that you will probably label even this with your favorite allegation of logical inconsistency. However, this is my stance and my explanation for why I do not wish to engage you here as if this really were an attempt at debate.

My first response will remain as the sole abortion-related post I make on this thread, and even that was not concerned so much with abortion as with your transparent dishonesty regarding your illusion of those who disagree with you on the abortion debate. You're not a debater or an intellectual, merely an illusionist- a cheap street magician who can't even master more than the basic tricks, a man who can only fool lightweights and himself while the crowd gazes on in awe not at your talent but at your woeful penchant for self-delusion and your pitiful belief and pretense that the magic is working, that somehow the world is really like what you present (and perhaps even believe) it to be.

You're even backed into a corner now, not even creative enough to do something other than exactly what I said you'd do- engage those three people's viewpoints as arguments, decry them as "morally bankrupt," and then pretend your own poorly-constructed response somehow makes it impossible for someone to sincerely hold those viewpoints. To reiterate, nearly everyone in this thread has presented you with valid reasons that someone could have for sincerely holding those viewpoints- but instead of acknowledging that, you're actually going around vicariously debating those third parties. Because that's the setup- your worldview is not secure enough for you to directly engage in debate on the topic, so you've created this game to validate it where you have degrees of separation. The actual pro-choice ("safe, legal, and rare") proponents aren't here making their own arguments- someone else is echoing them in this farce where you take the role of an authority figure with coins to throw at them. Moreover, they aren't even being presented or defended as arguments- rather as observations about the sincerely-held beliefs of other people. So you get those two degrees of separation, a nice little bullet-proof vest while you get to break the rules of your own set-up and directly engage in pretend-debate against opponents that are not here and arguments that aren't being argued.

This is just so fucking transparent, man. I know I've been using the word "pathetic" quite a bit in my responses to you, but I have to because that's what this is- just plain, fucking pathetic.

In short, I'm only here to piss you off. You'll probably read this and think that you've "won" some sort of (hollow) intellectual victory, like the kind you set you to feel when you made this thread. If so, go ahead and prance to celebrate that moment of dopamine and joy- it'll make that gnawing realization of your pathetic life feel that much less painful when the horror finally sets in.

Wow! Any tips on how I could get the sort of elite job that would allow me to save up US$15? I'd also like to cultivate hobbies like validating myself and flexing my income through fake debates on a site that's somehow an even worse venue than Facebook.